John W. James

Where were you when I needed you?

The saddest question we ever hear is, "Where were you when I needed you?"

That's what people ask when they find out what we do in helping grievers. We're presenting helpful and accurate information on this site, at the time you need it most, with the hope that you'll never need to ask that question.

It's an honor and a sad privilege to be addressing you, knowing that each of you has recently experienced the death of someone important to you. We also know some of you are reading this because of your care and concern for someone who is confronted by the death of someone important in their life.

We bring our personal experience in dealing with the deaths of people who were important to us, and our professional know-how in helping grievers for more than 30 years. We'll help you distinguish between the "raw grief" that is your normal and natural reaction to the death, and the equally normal "unresolved grief" that relates to the unfinished emotions that are part of the physical ending of all relationships.

A basic reality for most grieving people is difficulty concentrating or focusing. With that in mind, we asked Tributes.com to print our articles in a large type font to make them easier to read. Sharing our concern for grieving people, they agreed.

Ask The Grief Experts

Memorials and shrines are excellent reminders of people we love, but they do not necessarily facilitate recovery.

Q:

My 37 year-old son died in a horrid car accident six months ago. He was found to have alcohol and drugs in his system. As painful as that fact is to me, I have accepted it and am trying to move on. I want to do a memorial garden at my house in his remembrance, so that I can look at it every day. Will this stop my recovery or will it help?

A Grief Expert Replies:

Dear Margaret,

Thanks for your note and excellent question.

Memory gardens, like any other shrine or memorial, are wonderful reminders of someone who was important to us. From that point of view they have excellent meaning and value.

But of themselves, they do not facilitate recovery.

And unfortunately, they can inadvertently keep someone from taking the actions of recovery, since the memorial creates the false idea that some kind of recovery action has been taken.

The key is for you to take actual actions that help you discover and complete what was left emotionally unfinished for you in your relationship to your son and his untimely death. The actions that can help you are detailed in The Grief Recovery Handbook [available in most libraries and bookstores].

If you haven’t taken a formal set of actions towards recovery, we’d strongly recommend you do that first, before creating the garden.

If you have already discovered and taken actions that allow you to feel emotionally complete with your son—or after you do take those actions—then the garden will be a positive remembrance for you.

[Note: We’ve known many people who’ve invested an incredible amount of time, effort, energy, and money into creating remembrances of one kind or another, thinking that the thing they created would help their broken hearts. What they discovered, after the fact, was that during the time they were planning and building the shrine, they were distracted to some degree from the depth of their grief about the person who died. When the project was done, they realized their broken hearts were still broken. That’s why we said what we said about memorials above, “Of themselves, they do not facilitate recovery.”]

At Tributes.com we believe that Every Life has a Story that deserves to be told and preserved.

Tributes.com is the online source for current local and national obituary news and a supportive community where friends and family can come together during times of loss and grieving to honor the memories of their loved ones with lasting personal tributes.